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LANDSLIDE COMMUNITY VOTE ELECTS PEOPLE'S CANDIDATES: WEST OAKLAND COMMUNITY OVERWHELMINGLY ENDORES ENTIRE BLACK PANTHER PARTY SLATE

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LYNCHING IS LAW IN PHILADELPHIA

RACIST MAYOR FRANK RIZZO'S POLICE HANG BLACKS
AND LABEL IT SUICIDE.

It has been about one year since Frank (`Bozo') Rizzo, ex-policeman and full time gangster, established his regime in Philadelphia. (See Vol. VII Number 15, The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service). His candidacy for Mayor was solidly opposed by a united Black community, and now following his election, recent incidents have proved the worst of our fears: that the city of Philadelphia has become an "official" police state, where no law, from city ordinance to Supreme Court decision, is upheld, but rather, lawlessness by the "guardians" of the law has become the rule of the day. The city of Philadelphia, where the crack in the Liberty Bell has become a chasm, and from that darkness rides our nightmares, come to life. Philadelphia has become the city where white, racist vigilantes are sanctioned and deputized by Mayor Rizzo who acts as judge, jury and executioner in terrorizing, brutalizing and even lynching the people of the Black community.

The first of the continuing incidents which outraged Philadelphia's Black community occured on Friday, July 21st. Brother Larry Cross, 24 years old, was arrested for disorderly conduct after he tried to discuss a traffic ticket he received for driving too close to a police car. From the scene of this "crime" he was taken to the 61st and Thompson police station. Within two hours after his arrest, Larry Cross was found hanging by his belt from a water pipe which crossed over the top of his cell. He was taken to Lackenau Hospital, where he died the next day. The white `official' autopsy indicated that he had died of complications due to strangulation, his family could not accept this, particularly in view of an unknown telephone call they had received telling them to investigate their son's death. A second autopsy was done and while the actual cause of death was verified as due to strangulation, this time the autopsy also uncovered a head wound, deep enough to cause unconsciousness. Even in the face of this new bit of evidence the police at 61st and Thompson maintain their story, that Larry Cross hang himself.

Less than a month later, on August 9, as if to prove that Black people are chronic suicides, Christopher Mosley, a service veteran, was found in a cell in the 14th District precinct, dangling from the end of his belt, cause of death -- strangulation.

These two so-called suicide incidents prompted a Black woman, Mary Evans to demand the re-opening of the facts in the case of her son, who in February was found dead in a cell at the same police station where Larry Cross was found "hanging".

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Police later claimed Anthony died of an overdose of heroin, but Mrs. Evans claims "he was either shot or beaten to death because he never dealt with drugs." Although the district atorney's office refuses to release the record, Mrs. Evans says she will not give up until the truth is known and those responsible are prosecuted.

Not content to merely copy their Southern counterparts, whose part in the lynching of Black men forms part of our history, under Rizzo's direction Philadelphia police have also taken to the harrassment and brutalization of Black ministers. In the words of Rev. Joseph T. Kirkland, Pastor of the Church of the Redeemer and one of Philadelphia's most prominent Black ministers, "I had to run out of my own home to escape being beaten to death by white racist police." The incident began when police made so much noise brutalizing 27 year old Christian. Harris, for supposedly breaking into a store, they awakened the Kirkland family. When Rev. Kirkland called out of his window to tell the police to stop kicking and beating the brother since he was already subdued, the police kicked down his door, broke into his house, and brutalized him and his family. Rev. Kirkland, stated that … "to escape death, I had to run through the scene of death." Rev. Kirkland, his wife, daughter and house guest were all arrested; the charges against Rev. Kirkland make it appear as if he were a gangster. The charges include inciting a riot, disorderly conduct, assault and battery on a policemen, resisting arrest and general assault and battery. Reverend Kirkland was the only person actually arrested. As his lawyer later remarked, he (the lawyer) rushed to the police station to make sure Reverend Kirkland "didn't have a belt on him so he wouldn't have any `unfortunate events' happen to him too."

Something heinous, something monstrous is brought to mind about times in which we live, when a man like Frank Rizzo can become Mayor of the city of Philadelphia. Even before his election, in fact, as part of his campaign platform, Rizzo's position on both Black people and the death penalty were broadcast throughout the city. His 1967 comment, "Get their Black asses", just prior to a police head-cracking session on Black students protesting in front of the city's Board of Education building became the Rizzo campaign slogan in the predominantly white sections of Philadelphia. His down-home racism and his favorable views on the use of the death penalty as a "deterrant" for "crime" more than warmed the hearts of his fanatical, demented followers. As the city's top administrator, Rizzo's views now become the word, become law, and as such, they more boldly than ever, standout in their utter contempt for humanity, "Death to Blacks" cries Rizzo, from his `white house' at city hall. That he would be allowed to assume such an office, generate and condone such overt racism and call for such murderous action is dangerous, but perhaps even more dangerous than that, there are those who will obey.

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE.

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TOWARD AN END TO POLICE BRUTALITY

BLACK PANTHER PARTY SURVIVAL CONFERENCES IN CHICAGO AND
DETROIT FOCUS ON COMMUNITY CONTROL OF POLICE

"YOU THINK FRED HAMPTON HAS DIED, BUT HE HASN'T DIED BECAUSE YOU'RE FRED HAMPTON, AND YOU ARE AND YOU ARE, AND I AM."

These words, spoken by a young 12 year old Brother in a Chicago Church, and repeated by Father Clements during his speech, highlighted the August 12th Survival Conference to end Police Brutality and Establish Community Control sponsored by the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. The ideas that this young brother expressed, with an eloquence and conviction that would amaze people far older in years than he, pin-pointed the central issue of the Conference - the establishment of community control by a Black community conscious of its goals and united around its survival. This mass gathering was a historic one: over 5,000 free full bags of groceries from the Fred Hampton-Mark Clark Free Food Program were distributed; 3,000 free pairs of brand new, high quality, back-to-school children's shoes were given away and close to 1,000 free Sickle Cell Anemia screening tests were administered. All of this was done at a Survival Conference which marked the first time in the history of Chicago that over 5,000 Black people had come together

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with the intent of establishing community control of police.

Certainly no other city in America needs community control of police more than Chicago. This is a city were historically, even before the days of the infamous Hay Market Square murders of striking workers and the race riots of the early 1900's, racist dogs from the South, from the mountains of Appalacia and home-grown, from the city of Chicago itself, have gained their "manhood" by brutalizing and murdering Black people. Just mention the word `Chicago' and images come to mind of fascists shooting through the apartment door of Black Panther Party Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton, killing Panther Mark Clark and then murdering Fred in his sleep. Or take the recent expose' of the dope ring/protection racket formed by members of Mayor Daleys' "finest" and their murder of 6 Black businessmen who refused to go along with their money-making exploits. Truly, then, this was history in the making.

Just one day prior to this, on August 11, in Detroit, over 500 Black people participated in a Survival Day Rally held by the Detroit Branch of the Black Panther Party. There, 500 free bags of groceries were distributed to the community, with a chicken in every bag. The theme of the Survival Day Rally was in commemoration of David Hilliard, Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party and to demand his immediate release from Vacaville Prison, where he is being held in solitary confinement. But, there too, in Detroit, while the ceremonies centered around Comrade David, the issue of community control was equally stressed. Both members of the Black Panther Party and community people expressed their outrage over the recently innovated Stress (Stop the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets) unit of the Detroit police force which occupies the Detroit Black community. It is Stress which was responsible for the murders of three young community Brothers: Craig Mitchell, Ricardo Buck and Curtis McConnell. Particularly, in view of the total of 14 murders by the STRESS unit in this, their first year in operation and the recent acquittal of three STRESS pigs following the `accidental' shootout they had with off duty members of the Wayne County Deputy Sherrifs where one Sherrif was killed and 3 were wounded, it is with an eye on their very survival that the Detroit Black community begin to lay plans for community control.

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The issue of an end to police brutality and the establishment of community control of police was, perhaps, put into its best perspective by Comrade Bob Rush of Chicago. Speaking before the people who attended that historic Survival Conference there, his message was the following: "We understand that in 1974 we want the people to have the right to vote on whether they want to control the Police department or not. We know its going to take 25% of all the registered voters in Chicago to even put it on the ballot. It's an uphill climb. But for the Black Panther Party, along with the people, life is an uphill climb. Survival for Black people is an uphill climb. But we're not afraid, we're going to do the climbing."

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE.

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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE BLACK CAMPUS REVOLUTION?

This is an article written by J.K. Obatala, a professor at California State College at Los Angeles. His words may open to some of us a new realm of understanding about the very complex and serious process of revolutionary struggle. His words, however, are not the exact feelings of the Black Panther Party. We wish to make it clear that various student groups have progressed beyound the level of rhetoric and symbolic actions geared to creating fear and guilt in the minds of those people about whom we do not care.

We are always open to response from any segment of the community; our belief is that we must pay constant attention to all sides of a thing.

There has been a sharp decline in black campus politics in Southern California. This is particularly illustrated by the fate of the Black Student Unions, the vehicles through which much of the black political aggressiveness of the late 1960s was channeled.

The withering of the BSU is evident, not only at Cal State Los Angeles where the chapter has been dissolved through the indifference of its supporters, but throughout Southern California. At Cal State Dominguez Hills, for example, the once-militant BSU is gone, and in its place is the `Black Caucus,' which is nothing more than a negotiating committee - a student version of the NAACP.

At UCLA. the BSU is still intact but has opted for a relatively moderate program that smacks more of liberal Republicanism than of revolutionary change. Listen to Paul Williams, chairman of UCLA's BSU, in a recent issue of the black student newspaper, "Nomo." It could very well be Robert Finch:

"Our direction for the past quarter and the quarter to come is toward meeting the educational, social, political and service needs of black students in relation to self-help and coordination. Our programs and projects are designed primarily to service the black family at UCLA in the most constructive and productive ways we can. The Black Student Union programs are: Sickle Cell Anemia; Prison Project; Ethnic Film Series; Black Culture Week."

What ever happened to the black campus revolution? What ever happened to the gun-toting nationalist, the uncombed hair, the demonstrations, the handbills, the placards, the protests, the black leather jackets and Malcolm X "T" shirts that came to be such pervasive symbols of black militancy in the 60s?

The answer that impresses itself most persistently upon my mind is this: There never was a black revolution. There was militancy, anger, hate and frustration, but -- except for radical rhetoric -- never much of a genuine revolutionary intent by most black students. Ironically, if there indeed had been any deep revolutionary commitment and understanding among black students, much of the chaos and confusion in the later stages of the black campus rebellion might never have occured. For the genuine revolutionary understands that revolutions aren't made in a day and that violence is an important but not an all-important part of revolutionary strategy; that there comes a time when thought is more appropriate than action.

Yet the black campus mood today is not one of revolutionary reflection and regroupment; rather, it is conservative in nature. Indeed, the black revolution has become accommodationist.

Those who were talking about wiping out the whites yesterday if their demands were not met now seem more inclined to confront militant blacks if the gains from those demands are threatened. Thus a black administrator at one Southern California campus, put there in response to the demands of black students, has cautioned against admitting lower-income students with jail records because they might "cause trouble!" Such conservatism also exists among black officials on other campuses and is largely accepted by black students.

We should not allow the lingering, if somewhat stale, separatist rhetoric of "blackness" and "nationbuilding" to obscure the basically conservative outlook of the Afro-American student population. For even during the peak years of the black campus "revolt," the middle to late 1960s, such verbiage was nothing more than the fudge coating that concealed an essentially patriotic, pro-American and white-oriented black middle class.

Thus the "black world" to which the Afro-American student "millitant" supposedly declared his allegiance in the 1960s was, in reality, the placid white world of the 1950s. The black middle class had been disbarred from that world in the early '60s by the dogs, fire hoses and night sticks of the white establishment. Denied entrance into this

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white world, the educated Afro-Americans, led by a radicalized student sector, turned against their liberal mentors and stormed into the growing nationalist movement.

Here they etched the crude sketches of an alternative "black world" -- a fantasy world, devoid of hypocritical white liberals, decidedly more humane and, most important, controlled by blacks. This new world was supposed to be a manifestation of "blackness." It was nothing more than an attempt to cover up the fact that the black elitehad little of a concrete nature in the rhetoric of black nationalism, they were not qualitatively different from the demands the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had made in Montgomery, Ala., over a decade earlier when he demanded black bus drivers for the black community. Thus the "separatism" of the black campus elite was, for the most part, integration by the back door.

Indeed, the program of the BSUs was really the deferred dreams of the integrationist movement, transformed by frustrated minds into the surrealistic terms of those whose influence came to dominate the Unions. Blackness! Honkey! Soul! Red Neck! House Niggers! Negritude! White Racist Devils! Black Moses! Black Jesus! -- whith these expressions, the black student elite cursed the white man with a thousand tongues and at the same time implicitly worshipped his culture and institutions: Miss Black America! The Black Madonna! Miss Black Homecoming! The Black Church! Black History!

Again, these were simply the harangues of a frustrated and alienated people, provocative symbolism that tended to obscure the fact that the campuses continued to be training grounds for the traditionally conservative Afro-American middle class.

Finally, the Black Student Unions, as the vehicles of this conservatism, contained the germs of their own destruction. If they moved too far left, if they substituted political radicalism for racial millitancy, as was the case with the now-defunct Black Student Alliance, they would lose their conservative black student following -- as did the Alliance. On the other hand, if they managed to gain acceptance for economic opportunities (or incoming students) programs, black studies and other integrationist demands, the BSUs would deprive themselves of the very issues that had brought them into being and thus obviate the need for their own existence.

This seems to be what is occurring. It has already resulted in the decline and, in many instances, the disappearance of organized political activity among black students.

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“SURFACE TREATMENT”

LLOYD BARBEE CONDEMNS
WISCONSIN'S SUPERFICIAL
“REHABILITATION” OF PRISONERS

Outspoken Wisconsin Assemblyman Lloyd Barbee has more than once called for, in word and deed (through the introduction of legislature), the elimination of prisons. Recently his home state, Wisconsin, devised a so-called "reform" plan to stop the barbarity of the prison system by opening "treatment centers" for "criminals" and closing down most major prisons in that state.

Here are Brother Barbee's comments…

The Governor's Task Force on Offender Rehabilitation has made proposals which it claims would reform the prison system in Wisconsin. These proposals include shutting down most of the state's major prisons and replacing them with community treatment centers. On the surface this may look like reform, but it is not.

The only true reform by way of rehabilitation is the complete abolition of the prison system. By calling for the transfer of prisoners to treatment centers, the self-proclaimed reformists are just trying to cover up the basic flaw in the present system. It is a failure.

The Task Force report maintains what is already proven. "Corrections" is just a name. Twenty-nine percent of the prisonerse who are released return to prison within 12 months. Even for those "model" prisoners paroled and under supervision, 29 percent still come back. This is hardly the mark of a successful corrections system.

Prisons, rather than stemming the skyrocketing crime rate, do much to perpetuate criminal acts. A cell does not rehabilitate, it does not deter, it only further corrupts. An individual in prison on a minor charge will often pick up the tricks of the trade from the more hardened criminals.

The response to the task force recommendations are interesting and quite revealing. The diehard conservatives took an expected stance: out-right opposition with mild claims that murderous criminals would be let out on the streets to kill and rob men, women and children. Their approach is right out of the dark ages: "lock 'em up and throw away the key."

The qualified approach of Governor Lucey and other do-gooders was different, but not unexpected, either. In fact, they are much like the task force members themselves. In a political attempt to pacify both the reformists and hard-liners, they devise a plan of reform which is not reform at all. Their idea of replacing prisons with treatment centers is like putting a cast-on a broken leg without setting the bone. It makes the problem look better, but does nothing to solve it.

Implementing the report's recommendations will only worsen the situation. Why? Because so many people will be fooled into believing that the system has been made good. The basic idea of our penal system is to punish and lock people up, which we've seen does not work. Thus, the only way to reform the system is to drop it altogether.

Under no circumstances should we allow human beings to be caged up like animals -- with or without bars. Real change will only come about when the concrete walls and iron bars are torn down and unjust laws are removed from the statute books. Poverty, racism and frustration all breed crime. These ingredients are found largely in ghetto communities. Rehabilitation and an end to crime will be realized only when poisons are removed and when prisoners and offenders are dealt with as humans in or out of their own communities without the hindrance of walls, bars, guards and revengeful people.

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ARTHUR BREMER: LONER OR CONSPIRATOR?

Don Freed is a man whose writing can create interest in history where there has been confusion or apathy. His first book (a play), Inquest, is a true account of the lives and deaths of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two progressive people who were labeled communists, who were accused of spying for a `foreign power' and were sentenced to die in the electric chair. He is about to publish a book titled, Agony in New Haven, a documentary of the New Haven Conspiracy trial of Comrades Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins of the Black Panther Party in the spring of 1971. A major theme of his writing is the fear this country has of its own people, often apparent in the many restrictions, gag rules and abusive laws placed upon us. Their fear and racism cause us all to react in some manner.

The following is an excerpt from an article reprinted from Sundance magazine on the assassination attempt of George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, the man who has become a household synonym for racism, prejudice and fear. The article is based on information gathered by confidential C.R.I.C. (Citizens Research Investigation Committee) informants.

Arthur Bremer is accused of attempting to kill George Wallace in May, 1972. As it was with the murders of John Kennedy and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., it is speculated that poor, unemployed men like Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray and Arthur Bremer just do not plan such adventures without help and money.

We believe that the entire attempt was a pre-planned farce; that in fact his trial and speedy conviction on August 4th, 1972 are jokes, funny only in the sense that if, in fact, someone coached and payed him, the American people will never know. Our major concern is not that Wallace was shot or that Bremer was convicted, but that we are led to believe that Bremer is the real enemy of the people.

The questions, parallels to other assassinations, speculations and conclusions triggered by the events of May, 1972 are, necessarily, at this point, incomplete and await more information.

The public is informed by the establishment media that Arthur H. Bremer, accused would-be assassin of Governor George Wallace of Alabama, a Democratic Presidential candidate, is a disturbed twenty-one year old unemployed ex-busboy and janitors' assistant. Then the first question must be - 1) where did Arthur Bremer get the money for his mad scheme to kell George Wallace who, with his double set of body guards and bullet proof speakers' podium, was by far the most heavily guarded of all the candidates?

We are here computing Bremer's expenses - from January, when he last worked in Wisconsin, to May, when he was arrested in Maryland - at the rock bottom rate consistent with his eighteen week, ten state journey toward murder.

Setting to one side the cash outlay for stopping at expensive hotels (the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, the Lord Elgin in Ottawa); automobile repairs for a machine driven constantly for weeks at speeds up to 75 miles per hour in order to keep pace with presidential candidates

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who flew to their destinations; any miscellaneous expenses such as the records, ammunition found in his car and the expensive clothes Bremer wore into court when he pled not quilty; setting aside all these and any other contingency costs Bremer could not have spent less than five thousand dollars since he was laid off as a janitors' helper in January of this year. This extremely conservative figures would include the price of the guns he purchased, court fines for speeding and possessing a gun and the $135 a month rent for his occasionally used Milwaukee apartment. Important is the fact that all the while Bremer was ranging far and wide in pursuit of his quarry he was also doubling back to his Milwaukee base of operations. He was seen near his Milwaukee apartment only a week before the Wallace attack. Seen in the company of an "unidentified man."

On April 7 and 8, 1972, Arthur H. Bremer was staying at the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. Candidate Hubert Humphrey was also scheduled to be there on April 7. This would be a curious enough fact were it not overshadowed by another fact: Huber Humphrey's Waldorf-Astoria arrangements were not known to the public. The next day, April 9, Bremer met his contact on the Luddington, Michigan Ferry.

A ticket agent for a Wiisconsin-Michigan ferry line reported having seen Bremer on several occasions talking with an older, heavy set man as the two of them rode back and forth on the ferry boat. Bremer's 200 pound companion closely resembles a man identified as being in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963 and at the shopping center, changing his license plates, on the day George Wallace was shot.

In summary Bremer has no record at all of income in 1972; in 1971 his income tax return shows $1,611 in wages earned. His automobile, purchase in September of 1971, cost some $800 or half of his total income for the entire previous year. Besides, Bremer's pattern of travel makes it logistically impossible for him to have followed various presidential candidates' campaign trails and still be seen near his Milwaukee home base throughout April and May. Arthur H. Bremer was flying as well as driving.

The first on-the-spot media coverage reported that three men were involved. One was Bremer. One was a man who was rushed to a hospital. One was a man seen changing license plates on his car in an adjucent parking lot.

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BLACK PANTHER PARTY PROGRAM MARCH 29, 1972 PLATFORM

WHAT WE WANT, WHAT WE BELIEVE

1. WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT POWER TO DETERMINE THE DESTINY OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.

We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.

2. WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE CAPITALIST OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.

4. WE WANT DECENT HOUSING, FIT FOR THE SHELTER OF HUMAN BEINGS.

We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.

5. WE WANT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.

6. WE WANT COMPLETELY FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE.

We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventative medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide ourselves with proper medical attention and care.

7. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE, OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNITED STATES.

We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against Black people, other people of color and poor people inside the United States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces, and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self-defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.

8. WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO ALL WARS OF AGGRESSION.

We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desires of the U.S. ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the U.S. government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars that it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.

9. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL BLACK AND POOR OPPRESSED PEOPLE NOW HELD IN U.S. FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY AND MILITARY PRISONS AND JAILS. WE WANT TRIALS BY A JURY OF PEERS FOR ALL PERSONS CHARGED WITH SO-CALLED CRIMES UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY.

We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in U.S. prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the U.S. military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial that they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trials.

10. WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PEOPLE'S COMMUNITY CONTROL OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

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OAKLAND -- A BASE OF OPERATION

(PART III)

RIDING FROM BAD TO WORSE
ON "B.A.R.T."

NEW COMPUTERIZED COMMUTER TRAINS A COSTLY
CATASTROPHE TO THE PEOPLE.

As Part III in a continuing series on the City of Oakland, the following article centers on the Bay Area Rapid Transit: B.A.R.T.

Taking over 8 years to build, costing over 1 1/2 billion dollars (covered up in the form of taxes which affect Black and other poor people the most), and dislocating thousands from their homes (particularly as was shown in Part I of this series, on the Black community of West Oakland), the entire and as yet unfinished B.A.R.T. experience has been a nightmare for the people of Oakland. If, contrary to the original idea, the average person in the city won't benefit from B.A.R.T., who will? As the following will prove, with statistical evidence, the real beneficiaries of B.A.R.T. have probably never taken public transportation in their lives; and certainly won't start with B.A.R.T. The people who will benefit from B.A.R.T. will be those corporate capitalists who financed B.A.R.T., and who are sure to reap huge profits from its continued malfunction. As it turns out, transportation, like most other vital services, in America, operates in the interests of those who control and own, and against those who are most in need of those services; that is, poor people in general and Black people in particular.

It should be pointed out that it is not the intention of the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service to study the city of Oakland as an isolated, unique instance of the degenerate nature of big city government. Oakland, per se, is not the issue. However, the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service feels that if we use the city of Oakland as a base, with a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, we can begin to move out from this base to achieve the complete liberation we all want and desire.

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OAKLAND - A BASE OF OPERATION

(PART III)

RIDING FROM BAD TO WORSE ON "B.A.R.T."

B.A.R.T. was sold to the voters of Alameda County in 1962 as a solution to the region's transportation problems. The campaign for B.A.R.T. was organized by the Citizens for Rapid Transit Committee, better known as "the forty thieves". This group of so-called "disinterested" citizens included the heads of such big businesses as the Bank of America. Pacific Gas and Electric, Wells Fargo, Crown-Zellerbach, and Kaiser industries. The forty thieves proclaimed that B.A.R.T. would relieve rush-hour traffic jams and provide cheap and efficient transportation for all Bay Area citizens.

In reality, B.A.R.T. will do none of these things, for the system itself was never designed to solve the transportation problems we have. Worst of all, however, now that the system is built, it looks like the thing might not even work at all.

First of all, B.A.R.T. is solely a commuter transportation system. It is primarily designed to cart people from the suburbs into downtown Oakland and San Francisco and back again. Unlike the subway system in New York City, Chicago or Philadelphia, you won't be able to get around town on B.A.R.T., go shopping, or visit a friend in the community. If you work somewhere other than downtown San Francisco or Oakland, it won't even help you get to work. For poor people, and particularly for Black people living in Oakland and San Francisco, B.A.R.T. means little. WHY? First of all, if you look closely at the B.A.R.T. system maps, you'll see that there are really no stations in the Black community. (The one small stop in West Oakland is on 7th Street, directly across from the newly constructed Post Office.) In San Francisco, there are no stations in the Filimore or in Humers Point (two of the largest Black communities in the country). Black people need and depend upon public transportation most: yet B.A.R.T. clearly offers nothing. In fact, the entire B.A.R.T. system was designed and constructed to appeal to the suburban white middle class. They, not Black people, live in the suburbs and would be in need of "commuter" transportation. It is for their pleasure and comfort, along with the high profits to be made, that Black and poor people have been forced to move and bear the added burden of extra taxes it has and will continue to cost to construct and maintain B.A.R.T.

B.A.R.T. won't even solve the traffic problems on the Bay Bridge and in downtown Oakland and San Francisco. The people who designed and built B.A.R.T. themselves estimate that within 5 years after B.A.R.T. begins operation, rush - hour traffic jams will return to their current levels. One B.A.R.T. planner estimates that 60% of the people who use the system will not be automobile drivers, but "former users of other forms of public transportation." In many cases, B.A.R.T. will simply shift the traffic jams from Downtown to outlying areas. Just take a look at the gigantic parking lots which have been constructed around the Ashby-Adeline station in Berkeley and, the MacArthur Station in Oakland. The commuters will drive their cars to these stations, park, and then hop on the B.A.R.T. trains. Rush-hour traffic around these stations will probably make the Bay Bridge at 8:00 in the morning look like a ghost town.

One reason B.A.R.T. is not designed to make people less dependent on the very costly private automobile is the power of the auto-highway-oil interest in California. They had a hand in designing B.A.R.T. and they made sure that such public transportation systems would not compete with the private automobile. As a matter of fact, they made sure the system would actually encourage people to use the private automobile. That's why there are the parking lots around the Berkeley and Oakland stations (and most of the other major stations also).

To top it all off, B.A.R.T. has so many mechanical defects that it might never begin operation. The very heart of the system is a giant computer. This computer is supposed to operate all the trains as well as sell all the tickets. Now. B.A.R.T. backers tell us the computer isn't working. During testing, engineers found that the electronic brains on the B.A.R.T. trains (which receive instructions from the central computer to slow down, speed up, stop or start) have attacks of "amnesia". As one engineer explained, if mechanized B.A.R.T. brains are "unable to remember their identity or where they are going, the trains simply stop." Westing-house Electric Corporation, the company which designed and installed the computer system, says that this problem "will be cleared up." To date, the trains still get "amnesia", and one B.A.R.T. official told a local radio newsman recently that if B.A.R.T. were in operation today, at least one train somewhere on the line would come to an abrupt halt every three hours.

This is a minor problem, however, compared to what's wrong with the computer itself. With only a few trains in actual operation in the area,

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the central computer is almost operating at its full capacity. This means that the computer is incapable of operating the system when all the trains are running. Weating-house is working feverishly to do something; but they don't know what to do.

The only thing that beats B.A.R.T's inefficiency is that it isn't cheap. Not only won't it solve people's transportation problems, it is costing more than what we had before.

The construction of the B.A.R.T. system was financed by a $792 million bond issue (tax money). Then, $133 million more was needed to build the subway tube under the Bay. The trains are supposed to ride under-neath the San Francisco Bay. In other words as the "computerized" train takes you to San Francisco, you will be surrounded by the "sturdy" sand at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay. Property taxes were to pay for all this. An independent researcher has estimated that the real cost is actually much higher. The interest to be paid on the bonds amounts to over $650 million, with another $72 million in interest costs on the transbay tube loans. In other words, the interest alone will amount to almost as much as the cost of constructing B.A.R.T. The total price: $1 1/2 billion. YOU pay for all of it, to the bankers who hold the bonds, like Bank of America and Wells Fargo. This particularly affects Black people in both Oakland and San Francisco. B.A.R.T. has given slumlords the opportunity not only to raise rents that were too high to begin with (in order to collect the extra tax needed for B.A.R.T.), but raise them over and above any small property tax they might have to pay. The slumlords will probably use B.A.R.T. to come in from the suburbs to collect their rent!

Most of this money is going to the "forty-thieves", the bankers and industrialists who pushed the B.A.R.T. plan down people's throats ten years ago. They financed the B.A.R.T. bonds and they got most of the B.A.R.T. construction contracts: Westinghouse Electric received $26 million for the automatic parts that don't work; Bethlehem Steel, $23 million for the steel structure; Kaiser $77 million for various construction operations and cement for the entire system; Perinl Corporation (nationally known for not hiring Black workers), $37 million for construction of the subway structure; Bechtel and Tudor Engineering Corporation, $100 million for engineering and design. These are just 5 of the forty thieves who were "disinterested"!

Still, however, $1 1/2 billion is not enough for them; they want more. In 1968, B.A.R.T. announced that it had spent an extra $150 million for construction, but had no money to cover this. The "forty thieves" had other thieves, in the State Legislature raise the sales tax in Alameda, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties, for five years, to cover the deficit. This means that you pay for the B.A.R.T. monster everytime you buy cigarettes, food, clothes, or even chewing gum.

That isn't all. You are going to have to pay fare, in addition to everything else, if you want to ride B.A.R.T. Originally, B.A.R.T. administrators said that fares would range from 25¢ to $1.00. Two years ago this fare scheme was rejected as too low, and surveys were set up to "determine what the traffic will bear." The answer they came up with was a fare schedule ranging from 30¢ to $1.30. With this, B.A.R.T. became the first public transportation system in history to raise its fares before it even went into operation. Under strong protest, the fare schedule was lowered, but not by much. The basic fare is still 30¢, a nickle more than the present bus line: to go to San Francisco from Oakland will cost 10 - 15¢ more than it does now by bus.

R.B. Stokes, General Manager of B.A.R.T. claims that even with these high fares, B.A.R.T. will probably need subsidies from the State to keep the system going and to cover its deficits. California State Senator John Nejedly has introduced legislation to continue the special sales tax, indefinitely, for B.A.R.T., in order to finance the extension of the B.A.R.T. system into the suburbs of Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

Anyway you look at it, B.A.R.T. is bad transportation. As the statistics show, it is, however, "good" business. Black people in the Bay Area have been forced to pay, in rents, in moving costs, in added taxes, for a transportation system that doesn't even stop in the Black community. Our money will pay for a system designed to serve middle class whites, who ran to the suburbs to get away from us to begin with. The whole B.A.R.T. experience for Black people has been a game for the benefit and particularly for the profit of those who only wish to oppress and exploit. Nowhere at all were our needs or desires taken into the least bit of consideration. They should be.

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE

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VOTE AUGUST 19, 1972

FOR BLACK PANTHER PARTY CANDIDATES FOR RIGHTEOUS COMMUNITY CONTROL

FOR (W.O.P.C.) WEST OAKLAND
PLANNING COMMITTEE

NEAR THE POLLING PLACES THERE WILL BE:

- FREE BAGS OF GROCERIES

- FREE SICKLE CELL ANEMIA TESTING

- FREE BRAND NEW WOMEN'S SHOES

- VOTER REGISTRATION

When coming to the polls, please bring one or more of the following as proof of your residency in the Model Neighborhood area you are voting in:

1. Current drivers license.

2. Current Utility bill (PG& E, etc)

3. Current rent receipt

4. Student body card

5. Student I.D. Card

6. Currnt Employment Record

7. Current Credit card

8. Voter Registration Receipt

On Saturday, August 19th, 1972 elections will be held for 18 seats on the governing board of the West Oakland (California) Planning Committee, a policy making Board of Directors for Oakland's Model Cities Program.

The Oakland Model Cities Program is, allegedly, an anti-poverty operation that receives 4.9 million dollars yearly from the U.S. government, These funds are "supposed" to give aid to the Black and poor citizens of Oakland, through such things as quality education, housing development, and employment. However, when we look around the blighted, poor and oppressed Black community of Oakland, our immediate reaction is "where's that 4.9 million going?".

It is for this reason that the Black Panther Party is supporting ten candidates for seats on the West Oakland Planning Committee. These 10 candidates, members of the Black Panther Party and progressive community people, have shown through their consistent practice that they have the interests of the victimized and short-changed people of Oakland at heart. We urge the oppressed community of Oakland to come out and support the ten People's Candidates on August 19th. Together, we can force Model Cities to begin serving us, the poor of Oakland.

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INTERCOMMUNAL NEWS: WHY THE VIETNAMESE ARE WINNING PART III

NIXON'S TROOPS KEEP GETTING RUN OUT
OF "PACIFIED" VILLAGES.

Although Richard Nixon would like to present the illusion that the U.S. aggressive war in Vietnam is coming to a close because American and allied strength are defeating the "communists", nothing is further from reality. If the war is coming to an end, it is because the recent Vietnamese Spring Offensive is setting plenty of fire to American troops and running them out with full speed. With computerized bombs, lasar beams, and super-electronic equipment, Nixon still cannot defeat either the fighting spirit or the fighting ability of the Vietnamese people.

Black people in the United States can look with hope to this situation. There are only, approximately, 40 million Vietnamese people; there are nearly that many Blacks in this country. The Vietnamese people, like Black people here, are a poor people; have little access to modern defensive equipment; and are faced with a giant, over-equipped war organization bent on either enslaving the people or committing complete genocide of the entire people. We, too, are faced with a similar predicament while able to watch the mighty United States unable to achieve its military victory or its "Vietnamization" program inside a small and poor community.

The following is Part III in a series, outlining the concrete ways in which our Vietnamese Brothers and Sisters are warding off genocide, while struggling for self-determination of their homeland. This very complete report was gathered by Tom Hayden, anti-war activist, writer and one-time co-defendant of Chairman Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party during the "Chicago Trials". We would like to thank both Tom Hayden and Ramparts Magazine (from which the article was extracted) for allowing us permission to print this valuable information.

Theoretically there is a solution for the oppressor: pacification, the creation of "popular" support through forced submission. In other words, creating secure villages or strategic hamlets which could be defended by the local inhabitants after the conventional ARVN or U.S. armies conducted search and detroy missions and air strikes in the surrounding areas. Having secured the village, the conventional army with its concentrated technological force could move on to the next objective.

But for all its effectiveness at "search and destroy," neither the U.S. army nor its Saigon clients have been able to achieve the necessary corollary of pacification. Without pacification their initially superior power is doomed to weakness. When concentrated, they are forced back into enclaves, and the countryside is opened to the people and the guerrillas. When dispersed, their technically superior force loses its striking power through over-extension into too many forays and is in grave danger of letting its units become bogged down, pinned and surrounded, bled by guerrilla attacks and helpless to use its technological superiority and air mobility in other places. The problems of concentration and dispersal can be solved by the PRG and DRV by drawing upon the "reserve force" of an entire nation. But the ARVN can only rely on a thin and unstable fraction of the people. Their few "elite" units were destroyed in the February 1971 "incursions" into Laos and Cambodia. Their remaining reserve was immediately over-extended in the first days of the offensive.

When the offensive began in Quang Tri instead of the Central Highlands as had been expected, nine Ranger battalions of the ARVN were flown north immediately to Quang Tri (New York Times, May 3, 1972), leaving behind in the highlands only the 22nd ARVN division. The 22nd division is the "weakest and worst led" division of the ARVN according to the Times, April 25, 1972. Its first commander, widely believed to be in the narcotics trade, had a "heart attack" shortly after the offensive began and was replaced by General Nguyen Van Toan, who is known as the "cinnamon general" because of his traffic in that commodity and who, according to the Los Angeles Times, has a "pronounced reputation for high living," and was relieved

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of his prior command when "charged with rape by his teenaged maid." As soon as the 22nd division was left on its own by the outbreak of the offensive to the north, the offensive began in the Highlands. The 22nd division was quickly forced into a 115 mile retreat down Highway 14, losing six fire bases in three days and, as described in the U.S. press, "running like mad." American advisors beat them away from helicopters with rifles (New York Times, April 2, 1972).

In the meantime, while the publicity in the Highlands focsed on the growing siege of Kontum city, guerrillas in Binh Dinh Province on the coast of the same military zone (a province with a million residents, more populated than any part of South Vietnam except Saigon), the guerillas expelled the entire Saigon presence from more than half of the districts and raised the PRG flag. When the guerrillas reached the district capital of Hoai An in Binh Dinh Province, the Saigon troops fled and gave up the town because "reinforcements could have been drawn only from even more crucial areas (New York Times, April 29, 1972). Thus the most populated area of the coastal highlands fell to guerrillas in less than three weeks.

On the most publicized front, that of Quang Tr and Hue, the offensive wiped out fifteen fire bases in one week, then stopped at the Cua Viet River by the town of Dong Ha. On April 24, when the offensive had surfaced to the south in the Central Highlands, three battalions of 600 ARVN Rangers each were rushed from Quang Tri to Pleiku in the Highlands to reinforce that newly threatened zone, a move which "reflects confidence that the far north is out of danger for the moment." (Times, April, 24, 1972). One week later, Quang Tri fell.

A final ironic example of the dilemma of concentration versus dispersal for the U.S.-Saigon forces was revealed in the fact that the Ho Chi Minh Trail became more open to supply convoys than it was before the offensive unfolded. According to the L.A. Times, April 28, 1972, "Hanoi is moving supplies southward along the Ho Chi Minh Trail more effectively than it had since the U.S. started concentrating its air attacks on the supply lines." In March the Air Force claimed to be hitting 250 trucks per week on the Trail. By the end of the first month of the offensive the number of trucks hit had fallen to 25 per week, down by 90 percent. The reason: the overextension of air power needed on several fronts simultaneously throughout Indochina

END OF PART III

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AN IMPORTANT AND COMPELLING CRITIQUE OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY BY ITS CHIEF THEORETICIAN

With an honesty as rare as it is persuasive, Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, records the internal struggles, rivalries, and contradictions within the Party-certain that only by recognizing these contradictions and building from them can the Party "clarify and advance the struggle"

TO DIE FOR THE PEOPLE

The Writings of

Huey P. Newton

Clothbound $7.95; Vintage paperbound $1.95.

Now at your bookstore RANDOM HOUSE

-- 12 --

Blood in My Eye

Let this be his epitaph.

George
Jackson

(author of Soledad Brother)

This angry, passionate, eloquent book -- which takes up where Soledad Brother left off -- was completed only days before George Jackson was shot to death at San Quentin prison during an alleged escape attempt last August.

George Jackson spent the last eleven years of his life behind prison walls, seven of them in solitary confinement. During that time he developed a radical world view, a deep understanding of politics and history in relation to social change, as well as a remarkable voice as a writer. Blood in My Eye speaks out to the poor, the black, the jailed, the disenfranchised throughout the world. Born of a spirit that refused to be crushed, yet filled with a prophetic sense of his own impending doom, this powerful book from prison presents George Jackson's burning vision of the world that could be -- a world reshaped by "total revolutionary war."

George Jackson lived and died for the revolution. Blood in My Eye explains why.

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PEOPLE'S PETITION

FOR IMMEDIATE PAROLE OF BROTHER DAVID HILLIARD FROM THE CALIFORNIA PRISON SYSTEM OR AN APPEAL BAIL BOND WITH A RETRIAL JURY OF HIS PEER-GROUP.

WE THE PEOPLE, RESIDENTS OF THE WORLD COMMUNITY, IN THE SPIRIT OF REVOLUTIONARY INTERCOMMUNALISM, DO HEREBY REDRESS OUR GRIEVANCES AND PETITION THE COURTS OF AMERICA AND THE CALIFORNIA STATE GOVERNMENT AND PAROLE BOARD: THAT DAVID HILLIARD BE RELEASED FROM HIS PRISON INCARCERATION IN THE CALIFORNIA PENAL SYSTEM TO THE PEOPLE OF OUR COMMUNITIES ON PAROLE OR AN APPEAL BAIL BOND.

BROTHER DAVID HILLIARD, POLITICAL PRISONER AND CHIEFOFSTAFF OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY, WAS IN FACT WRONGFULLY CONVICTED ON FALSE CHARGES BY A PREDOMINATELY WHITE RACIST JURY, AS ALL MEMBERS OF THE OAKLAND BLACK COMMUNITY WERE SYSTEMATICALLY ELIMINATED FROM THE JURY SELECTION PROCESS IN HIS TRIAL.

IN LIGHT OF THESE FACTS, WE THE UNDERSIGNED, THEREFORE PETITION THAT DAVID HILLIARD BE GRANTED HIS HUMAN AND CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, THAT IS, PAROLE FROM PRISON OR AN APPEAL BAIL BOND BY THE AMERICAN COURTS PENDING APPEAL OF HIS CASE BEFORE HIGHER COURTS, AND THAT HIS RETRIAL JURY BE OF HIS PEERS, A TRUE REPRESENTATION OF A CROSS SECTION OF THE COMMUNITY. NAME
ADDRESS
CITY/ STATE/ ZIP CODE
COUNTRY
IF IN THE
U.S.A.
REG. VOTER

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MY SUFFERING, MY BITTERNESS, MY LONELINESS; I'M NOT GOING TO LET IT GET ME DOWN, I'M NOT GOING TO LET IT TURN ME AROUND